This is a notification of planned changes to the C17061 Key Information Set data collection, following the publication of the outcomes from the Consultation on changes to the National Student Survey, Unistats and information provided by providers (issued by HEFCE on behalf of the UK higher education funding bodies, and available here) and a further consultation on detailed changes to the KIS collection available here.

The KIS will be renamed. There will be a single brand for the new data collection and the web-based data service it supports (currently Unistats). The terms “Key Information Set” and “KIS” will therefore be deprecated in guidance, and in the formal title of the data collection. Once the re-branding of the Unistats website has been defined, we will notify providers and software houses of the new title for the collection. This will happen in due course. We will however use the normal collection reference (RECID) format so for the forthcoming collection the appropriate code will be “17061”.

Mindful of the need to minimise the accountability burden, the ongoing re-branding work for Unistats, and the forthcoming changes to HESA data collections to be defined as part of the Data Futures programme, we will not, at this stage, amend titles and definitions of fields to follow the standards identified in the HEDIIP Data Language Project. The “KIS Course” entity will therefore retain its title, and the following fields will also retain their current titles:

KISCOURSEID

KISMODE

KISAIM

Detailed course, curriculum and fee information will no-longer be collected in C17061, and the following fields will therefore be removed:

ASSACT

OTHSUP

COURSEWORK

PLACEMENT

ENGFEE

PRACTICAL

FEETBC

RELATEDKIS

INDEPENDENT

SCHEDULED

JACSL2

SCOTFEE

KISTYPE

STAGE

LEVEL

VARFEE

LTACT

WAFEE

MEANSSUP

WAIVER

NIFEE

WELSH

NONCREDITASSESS

WRITTEN

Accommodation information will be simplified. The following fields will therefore also be removed:

PRIVATELOWER

PRIVATEUPPER

INSTBEDS

INSTLOWER

INSTUPPER

The purpose and coverage of the NUMSTAGE field will be revised to capture the length of the course in years for Full-time courses (KISMODE=1) and those returned as Both (KISMODE=3).

There will be a new field to flag when a course is available optionally as distance learning. This is in addition to the current field which indicates a course is available only as distance learning,

In addition to the above substantive changes to the collection specification, we note the following points for clarification:

The coverage of the record will not change, however a separate piece of work concerned with the NSS is underway at the moment, which may result in an extension of the NSS coverage to include short and top-up courses after 2017. If this change is made, the coverage of the record will be reconsidered which may result in a change in future years.

In future all KIS Courses will be required to conform to the standard for what is currently understood as a “KISTYPE=1” including courses with a wide range of subject choice. The fields removed in point 3 above include all those relevant to the previous system of three “KISTYPES”.

Validation on the TITLE field will be relaxed in line with the new guidance. The KISAIM and HONOURS fields will be retained.

Any changes to the accreditation table made as a result of enhancements to accreditation processes will not affect the structure of the data collected. Amended guidance on accreditation processes will be published shortly.